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The “high-risk” patient

A "high risk" patient with legal addictions to junk food and tobacco.
She would be an excellent candidate for a trial of a drug to "treat" the symptoms, like "cholesterol", of a self-destructive lifestyle. Such people are beloved of drug dealers and trialist doctors on their payrolls because they are "high risk" and have high rates of "events" (i.e. artery bypass, heart attack and death) allowing investigators to publish papers faster and drug dealers to sell more drugs. Thus, all testing of drugs for lifestyle diseases necessitates conflict of interest. To insist that such people change their habits first would reduce "events", most of which are non-fatal, and prolong trials for so long that the high-paid "trialists" would die of old age before enough "events" had been registered to be statistcally significant. So NO trial of drugs for diseases of lifestyle has ever made a serious attempt to change lifestyles before trying drugs. All such trials were and are, therefore, UNETHICAL. Reports of the results of such trials should be retracted by the journals involved and the results should be ignored by all doctors. All such ongoing trials should be halted immediately.

Posts Tagged ‘magnetic resonance venography’

One has to feel a little sorry for poor Paolo Zamboni, the leg varicose vein surgeon whose wife got multiple sclerosis and who convinced himself that the problem must be in the neck veins analogous to stasis ulcers in the legs. No doubt he was well-intentioned but he was also very naïve. He was willfully ignorant of the powerful effect of faith healing in MS patients, including his wife, a phenomenon observed with every purported instantaneous “cure” for MS that has been inflicted on desperate patients over the last hundred years. Thousands of MS patients have travelled to clinics in such countries with lax medical regulations such as Poland, Italy, Kuwait, India, Bulgaria, Mexico and Costa Rica with unscrupulous doctors who perform the “liberation” for non-existent blocked veins for $10,000 or more. There are many YouTube videos describing instantaneous relief of subjective symptoms, like brain fog, cold feet and lack of dreaming. Some patients arise from their wheelchairs, just like those who go to Lourdes or St. Joseph’s Oratory. Zamboni created a monster that even he is powerless to stop. Initially he was recommending that everyone with progressive MS should have “liberation” on “compassionate” grounds but he has seen the writing on the wall and is now recommending that “liberation” not be done outside of controlled trials. That has not stopped thousands of medical tourists determined to be “liberated.”

There are now three good studies (see below)in MS patients and controls using sophisticated imaging techniques showing that “CCSVI” as a pathology does not exist. There are normal variants in venous anatomy in at least half of the population which have no pathophysiological significance. “CCSVI” is just another name for normal venous variation in neck veins. Only when venous pressure is increased can blockage of veins cause pathology. Of course, Zamboni never described his technique for diagnosing pathological “CCSVI” so that other investigators could repeat it and he can always claim that only he can see it. He always knows that the patient has MS before diagnosing “CCSVI”. That is not science, it’s shamanism.

These papers prove what I predicted about one year ago when CTVglobemedia announced a “breakthrough” in treatment for MS. If “CCSVI” doesn’t exist then the “liberation” treatment, dilation of purportedly significantly blocked neck veins, is a sham and there is no point in doing controlled trials of it, as I also recommended in my first post on the subject.

None of this is likely to stop the likes of Marien Simka in Katowice, Poland who makes at least $500,000 per week doing “liberation”.

Here is the latest and most important paper using contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance venography with blinded interpretation in normals and MS patients: PDF File Download

Lobby of the Qubus Hotel in Katowice in September 2010. Marien Simka's clinic was grossing at least $500,000 per week doing "liberation".

Medical tourist MS patients in the lobby of the Qubus hotel in Katowice on their pilgrimage to get the "liberation" treatment